POOP SOUP, GREEN LAWNS, AND FISH STICKS

When I was younger, The Taskmaster (The Mom) would creep up on us silently and stand with legs apart,  knees locked, and hands on her hips while her elbows stuck out like bent bobby pins.  We recognized this stance as Something Is Up.  Then came the Glare, followed by a voice using the highest octave known to man, including a note frequently known to make dogs shudder:  “GET UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!”   How a two-letter word, made up of a single vowel and one consonant could be made to sound like an entire Pavarotti aria, I'll never know.

 

We weren’t asleep; we were lounging around.  My mother thought that if SHE was mobile YOU should be mobile. 

“There’s nothing to do!” we’d complain.

Biiiiiiiiiiig mistake.  We were immediately handed scouring powder, rags and each loaded with a vinyl kitchen chair being sent to the back yard all the while given instructions to scrub the chair thoroughly.

If the chairs were somehow already clean, Taskmaster decided all the screens on the house needed to be taken out of the windows and abraded of every clinging morsel on the screen itself and the aluminum frame.  The backyard lawn looked like a checkerboard.  You were mindful to NEVER leave them lying on the grass all day in case Dad came home to find brown outlines of where the screens once lay.

If for some astonishing reason TM was feeling benevolent, our instructions were to:  “GO FIND SOMETHING TO DO!”; OR: “GO PLAY IN THE SPRINKLERS!”  That one was the best.  Which was how we came to have the most beautiful lawns in our neighborhood.  Between the sprinklers, the chairs, the screens, and What Comes Next, our precisely cut (thanks to Mr. Yamamoto, our then gardener), emerald green, lush yards were the subject of much envy in the 'hood.

I bestow upon you one of my secrets unbeknownst to my mother:


How to Have THE Green Lawn, Adoring Fans, Solve the World’s Problems, Achieve Peace of Mind and a Restful Soul, and, as a bonus, Eliminate Flies without Pesticides (all simultaneously).

 Step 1.  Have lawn (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).  

Before

After

Step 2.  Get (buy/adopt) The Factory (dog).

FRANK (a factory)

BEANS (the other factory)

Fuel

Step 3.  Buy Fuel for The Factory; hi-po or diesel, is fine.

Step 4:  Take Factory to Fuel Pump

Step 5.  Buy The Destructor (pressure nozzle) no more than 1 ¾” in height, preferably brass. 

Smokes added for scale

Made in the U.S.A. !

Nozzle has shut off (gooooood idea)

Step 6.  Attach Destructor securely to end of water hose.

Step 7.  Don appropriate attire.  You shall call yourself Dr. Disintegrator.

Appropriate attire

Step 8.  Identify Source (optional)

Step 9.  Locate Target

Intentionally altered for the queasy of stomach.

Power source

Step 10.  Turn on power source - employ Destructor at full force aiming it at Target.  Commence decimation.

Step 10a.  Let your mind wander.  Ignore the phone.

Step 11.  Continue to locate other Targets and disintegrate, Et Voila!  Poop Soup!

Interloper

NOTE:  Welcome interlopers to supply Targets, if you are running low and/or notice lawn is browning.

SIT DOWN and enjoy the bounty of Mother Nature (best eaten when warmed by the sun)

This technique to heaven verdant is wonderful as a punishment for the errant child.  I know from experience.

I am 9 years old when my mother, who was part Pit Bull, part Rott, part Shepherd all packed into a 5’4” frame and cleverly disguised as a sweet little Poodle but otherwise known as The Taskmaster, decides  to get not one but TWO dogs.  They are HER dogs, but my siblings and I are the designated Poop-Picker-Uppers.  Decidedly an odious task, I invent Dr. Destructo (or Dr. Disintegrator).  Pick up dog poop?  INDEED!  I devise a clever way to dispatch the offensive waste in the most expeditious way possible.

I set about decimating the steaming piles with the hose cranked to full blast.  The spray, made harsher by my ever-numbing thumb, tears into the steaming (or sun-baked) piles, turning them to slush before my very eyes.  Excitedly attacking each mound with fervor, I manage to also wash the windows (inadvertently), the neighbors’ windows (intentional), water the flowers, and make glorious mud puddles wherever grass did not grow, just waiting to be fashioned into a future home for pollywogs or tadpoles.  I love mud.  I am a bona fide Mud Lover.

When The Taskmaster calls us in for dinner, I enter with ice-white, wrinkly hands, my cheeks, forehead, and shirt spattered with mud.  With tennis shoes sloshing and squeaking as I take each step, I knowingly send my mother into a paroxysm of screams and yelps.  My pants, now blackened up to my knees are soggy, squishy, and wet; my beloved mud helping mold them to me and impossible to strip off without help from my sister; especially when I insist upon not removing my shoes.  Feeling my nose and cheeks burnt from the sun beating down upon me, I still Revel In My Cleverness, and am reminded that soon my face will result in a rash of freckles.  I sigh, feeling glorious for a job well done.

The only thing ruining my euphoria is the sudden realization that it is Friday.  In my Catholic household, that means Tuna Fish Casserole-- my bane.  I say Grace, which prayer includes a plea for grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, or pancakes for dinner.  Oh, it's Fishsticks!  I can choke down fishsticks (pass the catsup)!  My mother is PERSONALLY responsible for the wealth and girth of the Armenians.  Yes, never a meal passed without my mother saying, "Think of all the poor, starving Armenians."  Which is probably another reason why I'm fat today.

While under the watchful eye of our mother, my Adoring Fans (aka The Factories), sit at my feet, waiting patiently under the table for the fishsticks (those would be the fishsticks I can’t hide in my napkin. The Factories know it is Friday, too, their favorite day of the week.

I've just been thinking........